


mark comes home

by dyintherain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Brothers, Christmas Fluff, Family, Fluff, Gen, Mark Lee (NCT)-centric, NCT runs Christmas, Non-Linear Narrative, Santa's Workshop, all 23 neos are mentioned at some point, brief mention of drinking, do mind the vague times and places mentioned :), in general but please read the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28315374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyintherain/pseuds/dyintherain
Summary: It's been two years since Mark ran away. It's been two years, but now he's ready to come home.
Relationships: Mark Lee & Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48
Collections: NCTV Secret Santa 2020





	mark comes home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greetingsfrommaars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greetingsfrommaars/gifts).



> for greetingsfrommaars! here - a 1) family, 2) grinch/holiday cynic meets their nemesis in holiday cheer, and 3) a chance meeting - for you ♡
> 
> this is probably not what you expected at all from these prompts but I sincerely hope you enjoy this!
> 
> ***
> 
> for everyone: mild tw for losing a sibling and implied childhood trauma. these are v briefly mentioned in the fic, and the story itself is generally fluffy, but putting this here just in case.

🎁

 _Two weeks or two minutes ago  
_ **Somewhere**

The call comes in late at night, at a time when Doyoung would usually be already sound asleep if it was any other month. But, well, it’s December. 

So he picks up on the first ring. “Hello?”

_‘Hey, hyung.’_

The voice is small and tentative. _Hesitant_. It breaks Doyoung’s heart a little, to hear that tone from a voice he knows so well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jungwoo incline his head and stare at him curiously, but Doyoung pretends not to see. He turns and gets up from his seat instead, then makes his way through cluttered work tables, dodging a wayward rolling office chair with Haechan in it, screaming ‘ _Hen-de-ry! You motherf_ — _’_ , and finally pushes a heavy wooden door into the cool night air.

“Mark?” he whispers to his phone once the door clicks shut behind him.

 _‘Yeah.’_ A quiet sigh from the other end of the line.

“What is it? Did something happen?”

 _‘No, nothing. It’s just,’_ Mark starts to say. Doyoung can almost imagine him fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. _‘I think I’m ready to come home.’_

“Oh,” Doyoung breathes out, the sigh materializing like a little cloud in front of his face. He looks back at the door he’s just been through. “Oh, Mark. Everyone will be so happy to hear—”

_‘Wait, no! Please don’t… don’t tell anyone else just yet.’_

“No- okay, I won’t,” Doyoung says instantly, nodding his head even though Mark can’t really see him. He hears Mark let out a quiet chuckle, but it eventually fades out into a melancholy sigh.

_‘Hyung? I have one condition, er- more like a request, though.’_

_Of course,_ Doyoung immediately wants to say. _Anything_. But he knows better. So he stays quiet, waiting for Mark to compose himself.

_‘I want to bring someone with me.’_

“Oh.” Doyoung bites his lip. 

_It could be worse,_ he reckons. His mind has been drifting to worst case scenarios lately, when it comes to Mark. Part of him was expecting Mark to say— _but this will be the last time_ , or _but you must never contact me again_. Bringing someone along? He can live with that. 

Doyoung thinks about it for a moment. Taeyong won’t mind too. Probably. And Kun—well, Kun _may_ give him the cold shoulder for… give or take a decade. Doyoung can probably live with that too. It’s Mark, after all.

“Alright,” he says finally. At the tip of his tongue is the question of _Who?_ but Mark sighs—a happy sigh this time, and Doyoung’s heart swells. He’ll find out one way or another.

‘ _Thank you, hyung. You’re the coolest!_ ’

Doyoung smiles. He hasn’t heard that in a while.

  
  


🎁

_One year and ten months ago_  
**The house on top of a hill**

Mark wakes up on a cold, dusty floor. He rubs at his eyes and tries to sit up—groaning when he stretches his arms and finds them sore. His neck feels a bit stiff, too, so he puts a hand on it and turns his head from side to side, easing the tension.

He’s all caught up in the stretching that he doesn’t notice the figure standing in the doorway, gaping at him. 

“W-who are you? How did you get in here?”

Mark turns his head sharply ( _“Ow!”_ ) and sees a guy around his age...or well, the age he _looks_ anyway. He’s stopped keeping track for some time now. The room—a bedroom, it seems like—is a bit dark but he can faintly make out a head of bleached hair and sharp eyes underneath thick dark eyebrows, peering at him cautiously from the entrance.

Mark blinks a few times, clearing his vision. “Where am I?” he finally manages to croak out.

“ _Who are you?_ ” the guy questions back.

“I’m Mark,” he says then pulls himself up, clutching the edge of a loveseat behind him for balance. His hands come away all covered with dust.

“What are you doing here? How did you even get in?”

“I—” Mark turns and looks around the room, “I honestly don’t know. Where _is_ here?”

There’s a faint _click_ sound as a fluorescent lamp overhead comes to life and illuminates the room. Mark sees the guy knit his brows, one hand still on the light switch by the door. “Squatters aren’t allowed here,” the guy says plainly. 

Mark starts to shake his head, but something on the wall on his left catches his eye. He walks slowly toward it, ignoring the sharp _“Hey!”_ that the guy yells at him.

...It’s a wallpaper, or what’s left of it. A huge part has crumbled away, exposing the cold concrete beneath. The remaining part that’s still stuck on is also faded, but Mark can recognize that delicate pattern of lavenders anywhere. “Wait, I know this place,” he whispers under his breath as he runs the tips of his fingers over the wall and starts to remember.

He turns again, surveying the room with new eyes. They linger on the queen-sized bed at the center and Mark notices empty holes in its corners where he knows there used to be posts. On his far right is a giant oak vanity table, its ornate mirror frame sitting empty and littered with cobwebs. Everything looks dusty and… _aged_ , but Mark can still see the vibrance of the room behind his eyes like it’s just yesterday.

“I know this place,” he says again, loud enough for the other guy to hear. “Why is it…” he trails off as his breath catches in his throat. “Where’s the girl who lives here?”

“What?” The guy raises an eyebrow. “There hasn’t been anyone living in this house for over fifty years.”

Mark’s eyes widen— _has it been_ that _long_? —at the same time that the guy’s mouth drops open in shock. “Oh my god, don’t tell me… are you a _ghost_?”

“Hah,” Mark can’t help but chuckle. “No!”

The guy backs away slowly from the room anyway. “Okay… I’m going to call the police.”

“No!” Mark rushes over to snatch the guy’s wrist before he can reach inside his pocket for a phone. “I’m not—I’m not a ghost, and I’m not an intruder! Or, well… I didn’t mean to be. I thought there’d be someone here.”

The guy stares at the hand that’s clasping his wrist with a furrowed brow. Mark drops it quickly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why would you think someone would be here?” the guy asks.

Mark scratches the back of his neck, until he remembers that his hand is all caked with dust. “I- I must have mistaken this for another house,” he tries, hoping that the guy would believe him.

The guy stares at him for a long second. Mark holds his breath as he sees a dozen different questions flit through the guy’s confused eyes, but fortunately he just sighs after a while and rolls his eyes. “God, this is too much for 6AM,” he mutters, then turns away from Mark and pads back towards the long hallway outside the room.

“Wait, who are you?” Mark calls out as he follows him. 

A deep exhale, then- “I’m Dejun, I’m the caretaker of this place,” the guy says without turning around.

Mark glances at the faded wallpaper in the hallway, littered with slightly brighter patches of rectangle that he remembers used to hang framed portraits, then he looks down at the palm of his hand, looking gray from the bedroom’s dust. “Huh, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job.”

  
  


🎁

_One year ago_

**The small apartment in the city**

So, that’s how Mark met Dejun, the roommate that he’s been living with for almost a year now.

In hindsight, Mark thinks he should have just gone back, right then and there—when the girl that he wanted to see, when the house that he wanted to live in, have turned into nothing but a mere memory.

He really should have thought everything through. In his haste to run away, he completely forgot that time moves a little differently here than at… _home_.

 _But_ , he remembers thinking to himself, back then, _he was in the city anyway._ Might as well make the most of it.

Ten months later, and he hadn’t made the most out of anything yet.

He does have a nice apartment now, though, with a cozy window ledge and an uncluttered view of the snowy streets below. Mark admits he’s homesick—how could he not be, especially at this time of year when everywhere he turns, all he sees is snow?

But he likes it here, too. He likes living with Dejun and waking up to a fresh pot of coffee and heavenly smells of fried food in the morning, likes walking down the streets on the way to the bookstore where he works part-time (if only to avoid Dejun’s suspicion), likes getting to talk and interact with different types of people every day.

He misses home, but he also doesn’t want to give this up. Not yet.

The door creaks open, and Mark cranes his head to see Dejun struggling to get through it, using his waist to push the door wide open as he hefts a huge box with another box stacked on top of it, towering over his head. Mark runs over and pulls the door for him, then takes the top box off his hands.

“ _Holy_ —what’s in here?” he asks Dejun as he drops it down to the living room floor.

“Thanks,” Dejun sighs as he sets down the other box, catching his breath and wiping non-existent sweat with the back of his hand off his forehead. “I didn’t know you’d be home.”

Mark toes the two boxes on the floor. “What are these?”

“Those—,” Dejun says, walking over to the kitchen to get a bread knife. He plops down on the couch then starts ripping off the thick packaging tape over the first box before he continues, “—are my holiday decorations!”

Mark freezes, his hands still holding one of the box’s flaps. But before he can say anything, a rough voice calls out from outside their door. “Hello?”

Dejun shoots up from the couch. “Wow, they’re fast!” He runs up to the door and pulls it wide open, revealing a heavyset man carrying a—

“Is that a Christmas tree?” Mark shrieks. They briefly pause and turn to look at him weirdly. Dejun blinks at him, then turns back to the man, “This way, please.

Mark watches helplessly as Dejun leads him and the tree to the corner, the one by his precious window ledge. The man sets it down, as Dejun turns to Mark with a huge grin on his face. “What do you think?”

But Mark just continues to stare, lips in a dazed ‘o’.

Dejun’s grin falters, but he clears his throat and faces the man again. “It’s perfect here, thanks!”

The man leaves with a slight bow of his head, and soon they’re left alone in the apartment—Mark feeling like the tree’s glaring at him.

“What’s wrong?” Dejun approaches him.

Mark opens his mouth to explain— _we can’t have that thing in here, I don’t celebrate Christmas, or the holidays, for that matter. I hate it_. But the look on Dejun’s face stops him. Besides, he can’t really say any of those things, because he knows they’re not true. He’s made it a policy to not lie to his roommate as much as he can—god knows there are already quite a lot of truths he’s withholding.

So he tries to smile instead and sits down on the couch, angling himself so that he can’t see the large tree in his peripheral vision.

“Nothing, I just didn’t know you, er, liked Christmas.”

Dejun beams. “Are you kidding? I _love_ Christmas.” He plops down on the floor beside the boxes and starts unpacking the items inside one by one. “Well,” he pauses, then inclines his head in thought. “The whole December season, really. I just grew up with Christmas.”

Mark tries hard not to grimace. It truly comes as a surprise to him, and Mark can’t decide if it’s the fates playing with him or it’s just plain old, wacky coincidence. When Mark first met Dejun, he really didn’t think he was the type to exude holiday cheer once December rolls around. (And Mark _did_ think about it. He had to, considering.)

Dejun _is_ cheerful, but so are other people who surprisingly turn into grinches come Christmas time. And when Dejun first showed him around the apartment, Mark noted how sparse the decorations were, just enough to look lived in but not _too much_. Mark took it as a good sign. _And_ several holidays had come and gone, and Dejun showed no enthusiasm about any of it.

“But you hate Valentine’s day,” Mark says to him. It’s usually a tell—holiday lovers _love_ all holidays.

Dejun looks at him with furrowed brows and quirked lips. “And? What’s that got to do with Christmas?”

“They’re both, like, holidays,” Mark ventures.

Dejun shakes his head, laughing a little. “Christmas is wonderful! The snow—”

“It’s summer in Australia though,” Mark points out, and at the back of his head he can almost see Haechan smirking and flashing a thumbs up at him.

Dejun rolls his eyes. “Okay, well, the snow _here_. The Christmas carols, the lights? Gifts, holiday food, the general whimsical feeling of the season?” His voice rises higher and higher as he lists off the things that are apparently so wonderful about Christmas. “I mean, what’s not to love?”

Mark shrugs.

Dejun narrows his eyes at him. “Do you _hate_ Christmas?”

“No!” Mark says automatically. That much is true. He doesn’t _hate_ Christmas. It’s just, when you grow up in the… business, you kind of get used to all the holiday cheer and everything that comes along with it. At best, Mark would say he’s pretty neutral about it.

Dejun ignores his denial and pouts. “I can’t believe my roommate’s a grinch.” Mark has to giggle at that, and briefly wonders how Chenle would react, if he heard it. (‘ _I told you, there’s something about your face_.’)

He sighs. Haechan and Chenle—he really misses them both.

“I’m really not,” Mark presses. “I don’t hate Christmas. I… have no opinion about it.

Dejun pauses from unpacking his boxes of Christmas decorations. “Oh, is it like… a religion thing?”

Mark shakes his head. “It’s not that, I just…” he shrugs and gestures vaguely, hoping that Dejun would just drop the topic. It’s his own fault, he reckons, for reacting dramatically to a simple Christmas tree.

Dejun stares at him intently. “But you’re okay with me putting these up?”

 _Not really_ , if Mark is being honest (and selfish). He just nods. “Of course, this is _your_ apartment.”

“Hmm, that’s true,” Dejun hums. “And I have the power to kick out holiday grinches as I see fit,” he looks up and grins at Mark teasingly.

Mark groans. “I’m not a grinch!”

If only Dejun knew.

  
  


🎁

_Nine years or five decades ago_

**Somewhere**

Mark hears a sudden shriek from his left side, breaking his focus.

“ _Jeno!_ ” he whines, throwing his head back against his swivel chair. At twelve years old, he’s still small enough that his head barely reaches the actual headrest. “I almost got it!”

Jeno slides over to his station with his own swivel chair, peering down at the swirling mist on Mark’s table. “ _Pft,_ no you didn’t.”

“I did, too!”

Jeno rolls his eyes, then pushes his feet forward to roll his chair back to his own corner. “There’s barely anything in there! _I_ got _it_ ,” he taunts, accenting each word.

Curiously, Mark peeks at Jeno’s station and sees his mist filled with sharp and clear pictures, almost like a painting. Jeno looks at him, eyes smiling and chest ridiculously puffed out.

Mark rolls back to his station and looks down pouting at his own mist. It’s still an abstract mess of different shades of purple, no discernible image or even a basic shape in sight—Jeno’s right, there’s barely anything in here. But Mark _was_ starting to feel something, until Jeno’s shriek cut through his thoughts and made him lose focus. Now there really _is_ nothing, the slightest purple shades fading away as well until his mist is back to its translucent, default state.

“Hey, Markie—” a voice calls out from behind him. He turns to find his Ten-hyung, looking down at his mist with a grimace. “Yikes, that doesn’t look like a Dream.”

Mark sighs. “It’s Jeno’s fault.”

“Ugh,” Jeno scoffs, rolling into view once again to half-glare at him. “Excuse me?”

From across their stations, Chenle groans at them. “Can you all pipe down? Some of us are actually trying to work.”

“ _Right,_ ” Haechan calls from the farthest corner. “And _you_ shouting like that is helping!”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Mark hears Renjun sigh out on his right side. 

Just then, the door creaks open and Jaemin enters, bearing two steaming mugs. He sets down one on his own station beside Haechan, then goes around and gives the other one to Jisung.

Mark sees Jisung’s head bounce as he’s jolted awake. “Tea for you, sleepy boy,” Jaemin coos. Jisung accepts it wordlessly.

Ten raises an eyebrow as Jaemin passes by him. “Aren’t you kids too young for caffeine?”

Haechan snorts. “You should see what’s on his own mug, hyung.”

Jaemin shoots him a look then turns back to Ten with an innocent smile. “Does it even matter, hyung?”

Renjun pipes up before Ten can answer, “Where’s _my_ drink?”

“Talk to me when you become as cute as our maknae,” Jaemin says offhandedly. 

“I’m plenty cute,” Renjun mutters under his breath.

“My _god,_ ” Chenle stands up abruptly, causing the seven of them including Ten to look at him. “I’m going over to the 127 unit for some peace,” he huffs, then stalks out of the room.

Ten laughs once he’s out the door. “Good luck with _that._ ”

Six heads turn to him curiously.

“I was just over there, and if Doyoung and Taeyong wrestling on one corner and Yuta and Taeil having a dance battle on the other counts as peaceful, then…” Ten shrugs, not bothering to finish the thought.

Mark chuckles. “And the other three?”

Ten smirks. “Johnny and Jungwoo are placing bets on the winner for either matches.” Haechan nods, like _of course_. “Jaehyun’s the only one actually working.”

Mark shakes his head with a smile. In a few hours, he and Haechan will have to report to the 127 unit for a training session. He can only hope things have quieted down by then.

“Hey,” he turns to Ten. “What are you doing over here in the Dream unit, hyung?”

“To check up on you, of course. I’m the one creating the Gift from your Dream reports tonight,” Ten says.

Mark puts a hand on his lips. “Oh no, I’m sorry!”

“It’s cool,” Ten assures him. “I get to rove around the units, at least. You know how quiet it gets in WayV when we’re on creation mode—even _Yangyang_ shuts up,” he says with an exaggerated shiver.

Mark laughs. “Well, I guess I better get back to this, then, so you have something to do.” 

Ten places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You can do it, Mark.”

Mark turns back to his mist and closes his eyes. They don’t really need to, but he personally finds it useful to keep his focus. He has managed to quickly get the hang of conjuring up a Dream in his mist, even at a young age. But this night, it’s proving particularly difficult. It takes a few seconds longer than usual, but finally, Mark feels a tug deep in his core, a sign that a Dream is beginning to take shape.

He slowly opens his eyes and sees the same shades of purple from earlier, but this time they don’t stay abstract. This time, the swirls rearrange themselves and form together shapes, figures, until finally Mark sees an image of a little girl in a lilac dress, dancing around a field of lavender.

Mark keeps waiting for something, anything, to happen—Dreams are usually filled with adventures, jumping from one setting to the next, shuffling through different characters. But the mist stays like that, just an endless field of lavender and the blur of the little girl’s figure, her lilac dress blending in as she twirls and dances and runs.

He gets fully immersed in the Dream, as he should, that he doesn’t notice Ten is still standing behind him until the purples recede from the mist again and it’s clear once more.

“That was a nice Dream,” Ten says wistfully, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Good job, Markie.”

Mark can’t help but smile, too. 

“No need to send me a full report,” Ten squeezes Mark’s shoulder one more time. “I already know what to make for her.”

🎁

_Nine years or five decades ago_

**The house on top of a hill**

Mark is standing inside a large bedroom, about thrice the size of his own back home. The room looks… _soft_ , is the only word Mark can think to describe it. There’s a delicate white lace curtain hanging on one wall, the fabric thin enough for a little bit of moonlight to shine through the window.

In the center is a huge four-poster bed, draped in generous swathes of violet-hued chiffon fabric. In it, a girl who looks the same age as him is lying asleep, her hair gracefully spread out on the pillow like a sun’s rays. Mark thinks she looks a lot like the princesses he sometimes sees in other Dreams. He stares at her, a strangely familiar feeling blossoming under his skin. It’s not until the girl shifts in her sleep, pulling down the covers a little that Mark glimpses the lilac gown she’s wearing.

 _It’s the girl_.

Mark looks down at the Gift he’s clutching in his hands—it’s a cylindrical thing, with lavender patterns delicately drawn across it. _A roll of wallpaper_ , he realizes as he turns it over and over in his hands. He should have known, or guessed at least. But then again, he never really looks at the Gifts as it’s never his business to do so. His only job is to make sure they get to wherever they need to be, safe and sound.

It’s strange, though.

As part of both the Dream and 127 units, he gets to see Dreams _and_ go out into the world to deliver the Gifts that the WayV unit puts together. But he’s never experienced this—bringing a gift to the same person he created the Dream report for, the very same dream that Ten used to personalize the Gift that Mark is now holding in his hands.

It feels more special, somehow.

Mark gently puts down the roll of wallpaper on the nightstand beside the girl’s bed. It’s not really a physical thing, at least not as soon as it leaves Mark’s hands. Gifts are more of a concept, an idea, that WayV weaves together out of the Dreams that Mark’s unit sees through the mists. Most times, the physical thing that 127 brings to the humans the Gifts are meant for are just representations, something tangible that they can take from their world to here, but as soon as it touches something on earth, they dissipate into the air and will later manifest in the form of… contentment, inner peace, a loving relationship, even something as trivial as a perfect mark on a test or the last piece of a favorite food. Something that they need. 

But sometimes, Gifts manifest as physical things, too. Not at the place where they are left, but later, as well—a random knick-knack found in a thrift store, an actual gift bought and given by a friend.

Mark wonders which of these types the wallpaper falls into. He hopes it’s the second. He rather thinks it would really fit the girl’s room. He lets go of the wallpaper, and it instantly dissolves, the air around it slightly shimmering in the barest hint of purple for a few seconds.

Mark takes one last glance at the girl and turns to go, but she suddenly shifts again, whimpering faintly. It’s only then that Mark notices there’s another person in the room—an older woman, slumping against the loveseat on the corner. She stirs awake as the girl’s whimper starts to get louder, then almost flies from her seat and perches on the bed, fussing around the little girl.

“Yeri,” the woman whispers. “It’s alright, dear. Mama’s here.” She reaches over and picks up a purple towel, wiping it daintily across the little girl’s forehead.

 _She’s sick_ , Mark registers.

He stands frozen for a moment, just staring at the sweat beading on the girl’s forehead and listening to her mother’s soothing voice. The whole scene tugs at Mark’s heart and he clutches at his chest at the unfamiliar feeling.

Dazed, Mark watches as the girl slowly opens her eyes, blinking a few times in the moonlit room, before turning her gaze straight to where Mark is standing.

Mark’s eyes widen—he hastily pictures his home and wills his own body to take him back, just as the girl starts to open her mouth. Mark doesn’t get to hear what she says or if she even says anything, as in the blink of an eye, he’s back at the workshop, in his station at the 127 unit, with Johnny staring at him curiously from the corner.

“You alright, kid?”

Mark can only nod his head.

It’s not until Mark is seated, his short legs dangling from the high chair that he realizes what just happened—she wasn’t supposed to, _nobody_ was supposed to, but Mark is pretty sure that the little girl in the lilac dress was able to see him.  
  
  


🎁

_One year and ten months ago_  
**The house on top of a hill**

“Huh, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job,” Mark says to Dejun’s back.

“It’s my first day here,” Dejun explains as he walks through the house’s parlor and through another doorway into the kitchen. Mark follows after him, taking in every corner of the place and feeling nostalgic for the home that was never his.

The kitchen is well-illuminated compared to the other rooms but no less dusty. The window near the dining table is thrown wide open, except there’s no longer a dining table there—or chairs, for that matter. It’s just a big wide empty space and it’s seeing that, more than anything else that Mark has seen since he woke up, that finally made it sink in:

_“There hasn’t been anyone living in this house for over fifty years.”_

Memories start to play on his mind, but the sudden strong smell of coffee brings him back to the present. Mark turns and sees Dejun standing in front of the wooden counter, holding a to-go cup and looking strangely… pristine, amidst the grayed-out kitchen. Mark’s face must have looked wistful, because Dejun says to him, “I only got one for myself.”

It takes a beat for Mark to realize he’s talking about the coffee.

“I mean, if I’d known I’ll run into an intruder here, I would have gotten more,” Dejun continues.

Mark lets out a short laugh. “It’s cool,” he waves a hand at Dejun.

Dejun raises a thick brow. “That was a joke. Why are you still here, anyway?”

Mark bites his lip. “Uhh, I—” he gestures at the doorway they just went through. “You were talking to me so, uh…” He clears his throat. “So you’re the caretaker?”

Dejun stares at him again, the way he did back in the bedroom, like he’s deciding something about Mark. He must have decided something good, because he nods at him after what feels like several minutes.

“Yeah. One of the grandchildren, I think, of the woman who used to live here—he placed an ad on the local paper last week. And I didn’t have anything else to do and my place is just, well, down the hill, so I thought why not?”

Mark hears the words, but his brain has stuck on ‘ _the woman who used to live here’_. In his mind, he can still see the lilac dress and the lavender field from the Dream, all those years ago.

“I knew her,” Mark murmurs.

“Huh?”

“I- I knew her,” Mark stutters out. “The woman who used to live here.”

“Oh?” Dejun looks at him curiously.

“Yeah, a very long time ago.”

“Okay, you kind of freak me out when you talk like that, man. You look like you’re just 21. What are you, a vampire or something?”

Mark smiles. “Maybe.”

“Right,” Dejun snorts.

Mark pouts—he never had a good lying face. He clears his throat after a moment. “She was my... friend. Her name was Yeri, and she loved purple.”

Dejun slowly puts down his coffee cup. “Okay, _now_ I’m really freaked out. Get out of this house.”

Mark forces a giggle. “I’m kidding!”

“What’s funny about that?” Dejun asks with a hard stare.

 _Nothing_ , Mark thinks.

Dejun picks up his cup again and throws back the last of his coffee. “Okay,” he says as he slams the cup back down to the table. “Now I’m awake and fully recognize how weird this is. _Who are you?_ ”

“I’m Mark.”

“Okay, _Mark_ ,” Dejun says with a sarcastic lilt, “What are you doing in this house? There’s nothing to steal here, I checked.”

“What?”

“What?” Dejun echoes back.

Mark shakes his head. “I- I told you, I must have mistaken this for another place.”

Dejun turns to look at the open window which overlooks the grassy hillside. “This is the only house in like, a five-mile radius.”

“Uhh—”

“Oh,” Dejun faces him again. “I see what’s going on here.”

Mark just stares back at him with what he hopes is an innocent look, waiting for what it is that Dejun sees is apparently going on here. Humans, Yuta once told him a long time ago, are pretty good at explaining away things they don’t understand.

“It’s a dare, right?” Dejun finally says, then rolls his eyes. “Spend the night in the abandoned house on the top of the hill. _Could be fun_!”

Mark tries to laugh. “Y-yeah… you caught me,” he says, scratching his head. “It’s- it’s my stupid roommates,” he adds to the lie. “I lost a bet so I couldn’t go home for one night, had to find another place to crash.”

“That’s awful,” Dejun says with a shocked look. “But don’t you have other friends to stay with?”

“Nah, they were all in on it,” Mark says.

“Are you sure they’re your friends?” Dejun asks. “I mean, that’s kind of harsh.” Mark bites his lips as he realizes he may have gone too far.

“You know,” Dejun speaks again before he can think of what to say. “I have an extra room in my place.”

Mark inclines his head. “Are you…?”

“Offering? Yeah, I… I’ve lived with difficult people before,” Dejun says, voice getting quiet at the end of the sentence. “So, you know. I get it,” he shrugs and smiles at Mark. “Besides, I’d save a lot if someone’s splitting the rent with me.”

Mark looks around the kitchen once again. Everything looks so dull and muted now, the only spot of color around him the green of the grass and the trees outside the window.

He thinks of home—they probably haven’t realized he’s gone just yet. If he comes back now, no one would even have to know that he tried to run away—to a now empty house on earth covered in dust and a faded lavender print on the walls, to a lingering memory.

“Are you sure?” he asks Dejun, but also himself.

Dejun raises his shoulders in a _what the hell_ shrug. “You seem nice—well, except for the whole… breaking and entering.”

“I wasn’t—” Mark breathes in deeply, then exhales an “Okay,” trying not to imagine his hyungs’ disappointed faces back home as he does so.

“Okay, then,” Dejun beams. “Come back here later at around four so I can take you there. I still have to clean this all up,” he gestures around him.

“Oh, I can help,” Mark offers.

Dejun’s mouth quirks up at one corner. “Really?”

Mark nods. It’s not like he has anywhere else to go.

“Cool!” Dejun exclaims. “I think I’m going to like you as a roommate.”

  
  


🎁

_Five years or five decades ago_

**The house on top of a hill**

Mark isn’t supposed to be on earth during this time of year—or day, for that matter.

The sun is shining high above him, and a cool breeze is blowing through the trees, ruffling the dandelions on the hilltop and seeping through Mark’s skin underneath his loose shirt. He’s never seen this world in the daytime, and while he loves the night view of stars and twinkling lights in cities and villages, he finds that there’s also a certain charm to seeing the earth in full vibrant color under the sun—greens and reds and yellows and blues. Shades he only ever sees in Dreams.

In front of him is a huge house, three-stories tall and painted in a soft eggshell hue. He’s standing by a glass window where the curtains are pulled back just enough for him to glimpse what’s inside. It looks like a dining room and—

Mark lets out a quiet gasp when he sees the girl, _the little girl_ , looking back at him with a curious gleam in her eyes.

He ducks out of sight, heart beating fast. _How can it be?_ He looks down at his own hands, as if there’s some knowledge to be gleaned from it. He dares to peek inside again and sees the girl still staring—beside her is the same woman that Mark saw in the room from... was it four years ago? On her other side is a bearded man that Mark assumes is her father. He ducks away again, but not before he catches his own faint reflection in the glass—tall and gangly and definitely all grown up.

He’s sixteen now, but the girl still looks the same as she was when Mark first saw him when he was twelve.

“Hey!”

A sudden voice jolts him out of his thoughts. The little girl is suddenly in front of Mark, looking up at him with a toothy smile. Mark looks back at the dining room through the window and sees only the woman left, cleaning up the dishes from the table.

“I knew you were real! Mama and Papa won’t believe me,” the girl exclaims with a pout.

Mark crouches down to look her in the eye. “You can see me?”

The girl looks at him with _duh_ written all over her face. “Are you my guardian angel?”

Mark laughs a little. “No, I’m just…” He trails off. In truth, he doesn’t know what he is, either.

The girl inclines her head and stares at him intently. “Why are you suddenly old? You were small like me last Christmas.”

“Last Christmas?”

The girl nods, pointing up above her. “I saw you in my room.” Mark looks up to follow her gaze and sees an open window above, lace curtains swaying in the wind.

“But it’s been four years,” Mark whispers. The girl— _Yeri_ , Mark suddenly remembers—pays him no mind as she suddenly exclaims, “Wait here!”

Mark does, as he watches her run over to the front of the house. He hears a door thrown open and a gentle voice saying “Yeri! What are you doing?” from inside. It’s only a minute later that she comes bounding up again to the side of the house where Mark is now seated on the grass and leaning against the wall.

“Let’s play!”

Mark turns to look at her—she’s holding a doll on each hand, a girl and a boy. “Uhh, I’m too old to play dolls…” he starts to say as Yeri plops down on the grass besides him.

“No one ever goes up here,” Yeri says, ignoring him. “And Mama won’t let me go down the hill to go to school or play with other kids. I’m so glad you came to visit me.”

Yeri holds up the doll she has clutched with her right hand, it has long purple hair made of yarn and a lilac dress with a white ribbon tied to its waist. “Papa had this made for me in the city. Don’t you think it looks just like me?” She holds it right next to her face and smiles.

Mark can’t help but smile too. “It does look like you.”

“And this is my brother,” Yeri says excitedly, holding up her left hand. This doll has black hair with a fringe covering its forehead, and wearing a plain white polo and blue shorts with suspenders.

“You have a brother?” Mark asks.

Yeri casts him a sad smile. “I had one. We were twins but…” her voice gets smaller as she trails off. “His name’s Minhyung.”

Mark stills. There’s something about the name that for some reason sent a sharp pain to his chest.

“W-where is he now?” he asks, gulping.

Yeri looks up at the sky. “Up there. That’s what Mama said.”

There’s a sudden sound of a door opening from the back of the house, then a few muffled footsteps. Yeri jumps as a woman—her mother—comes into view.

“Yeri, who are you talking to?”

Yeri looks at him, but Mark knows the woman won’t be able to see him. He’s right, as Yeri’s mother just shakes her head and holds out her hand to bring Yeri up. “Come now, you know you can’t stay outside for too long.”

Yeri reluctantly takes her mother’s hands and stands, but not before casting one last glance at Mark.

When they’re gone and back inside, Mark remains sitting on the grass, looking up at the sky.

_‘Up there. That’s what Mama said.’_

His home doesn’t really have any fixed position in this world, but whenever Mark is on earth, he looks up at the sky and thinks of it as his home, too.  
  


🎁

_Christmas Eve, One year ago_

**The small apartment in the city**

“That smells _heavenly_ ,” Mark calls out as soon as he opens the door to their apartment.

Dejun pokes his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, you’re home!”

Mark hangs his coat by the door and pads down the short hallway following the smell—vanilla, chocolate, and a faint hint of cinnamon. When he gets to the kitchen, Dejun is just setting a tray of cookies down the kitchen island and closing the oven door behind him with his knees.

“You _bake_?” Mark says, a bit slack-jawed at both the aroma and this discovery.

Dejun shrugs timidly. “Yeah, but I haven’t in a while. I hope they’re still good.

Mark eagerly reaches out a hand to try one but Dejun swats it away with a pot-holder. “Hey!”

“That’s for Santa!” Dejun chastises as Mark’s lips quirk in amusement. Dejun turns his back on him and comes back a few seconds later with a different plate of cookies. “This is the batch for you.”

“Santa, really?” Mark says as he takes one cookie, but the sarcasm dies down on his mouth as he takes a bite. “ _Holy crap_ , this is so good!”

“Yeah?” Dejun grins. 

“Yeah, dude! I can’t believe we’ve been roommates for like, ten months and I’m only getting to taste this now.”

Dejun chuckles. “I get so busy the whole year and, well, I only really like baking when it’s Christmas.”

Mark stares at him. “You really love this season, huh?” He laughs suddenly as he remembers what Dejun said just before this— “And cookies for Santa?”

Dejun scoffs at him, ears blushing pink as he turns away from Mark. “I- I know he doesn’t exist, okay? It’s just… tradition.”

  
  


Doyoung appears right in the middle of their living room at midnight, blocking Mark’s view of the TV and the cheesy Christmas movie that he and Dejun are watching.

“Hey!” he groans out of instinct, and it’s only when Dejun looks at him weirdly that Mark gets a second look at the tall figure in front of him—someone that Dejun obviously can’t see.

“What?” Dejun asks him curiously, but Mark’s gaze is fixed at the figure, who is looking back at him with a mouth open in shock and eyes that are slightly watery and shining in the moonlight. _Doyoung._

“Uhh,” Mark stammers out. “I’m going to sleep.”

“What?” Dejun exclaims. “We just started this second movie!”

Mark swallows hard. “I’m sorry, I’m just really sleepy. Must be all of the cookies.”

Dejun looks at him worriedly but smiles after a while. “Okay, I’ll finish this by myself then. Merry Christmas?”

Mark smiles back, “Merry Christmas.” He shuffles guiltily toward his room, feeling Doyoung follow him. He opens his door and lets Doyoung enter first, then closes it with a sigh.

“Hey, hyu—” he doesn’t finish his greeting as he’s thrown backwards in Doyoung’s forceful hug, almost breaking his door off its hinges.

“Mark Lee, you stupid kid!” Doyoung exclaims in his ear, voice breaking.

“Mark, everything okay?” he suddenly hears Dejun call out from what seems like just outside his door.

“Y-yeah, uh, I’m just a little dizzy?”

“You’ve had like, one bottle,” Dejun says skeptically, referring to the beer that Mark nursed for a whole movie and a half tonight.

“Well, I’m a lightweight.” Mark says with a forced chuckle. “I’m okay, I’m just… I just need to sleep.”

“Okay,” he hears Dejun say slowly, then a pair of footsteps retreating back to the living room. Meanwhile, Doyoung still hasn’t let go of him.

“Hyung, I—I can’t breathe.”

Doyoung reluctantly pulls away. “God, Mark Lee! I—we were all so worried!”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs in reply, looking down at the floor of his bedroom. There really is nothing else to say.

“Why did you leave, Mark?”

The question sends a heavy weight down his chest, and he almost tears up from the soft tone that Doyoung asks it in. Mark has gone too long forcing the thought of the family he left behind for the last ten months, not because he hates them— _god_ , quite the opposite—but because he’s _ashamed_.

“I-” he opens his mouth to explain but finds that he can’t. Not with words that make sense. Why _did_ he leave? He wanted to live in the house on top of the hill—that’s the plain truth, but on its own it still doesn’t really explain anything. He never wanted to run away, but he desperately needed to come back to that house. At the end of the day, aren’t these the same thing?

“How did you know I’m here?” Mark settles for this instead.

Doyoung seems to deflate then, dragging himself to Mark’s bed, the only place in this room where you can sit, and lying down on it. Despite everything, Mark finds himself giggling. It’s quite a funny sight - his Doyoung-hyung in his tailored suit, lying on his cheap sheets in his miniscule bedroom.

“I didn’t,” Doyoung mumbles, his hands rubbing his eyes. “Well, not for sure. I was just coming to deliver a Gift to that boy,” he continues then points with his mouth towards Mark’s closed door, and beyond it, his roommate who’s back to watching a movie in their living room.

“Oh,” Mark says. It’s only then that he notices that Doyoung is actually holding something in his hand. Mark walks over to his bed and plops down on it beside Doyoung, getting a closer look at the Gift. It’s an empty picture frame—small and simple enough with a dark wooden frame and a thin glass.

“What’s that supposed to represent?” Mark asks.

Doyoung shrugs, “Only Kun knows.” He sits up, seeming to have regained his energy. Mark sees him look around his room, and he cringes at the thought of Doyoung scrutinizing every little detail here, but instead he just says—

“You’ve really made a home for yourself here, huh?” Doyoung looks straight into Mark’s eyes with such fondness that the tears that Mark was managing to hold back just earlier come rushing out. Doyoung immediately scoots closer and takes him into his arms, rubbing his back and patting his head. “Ah come on now, Mark. I’m gonna cry too.”

“I missed you, hyung. I missed you all,” Mark manages to say in between sobs.

“We missed you too,” Doyoung murmurs. “Why haven’t you come home yet?”

Mark pulls away from the hug, wiping his tears with the back of his hands. Trust Doyoung to not sugar-coat anything even when Mark is a crying mess. A year has passed now since he has last seen or talked to any of them— _his brothers_. It’s not too long, considering, but Mark feels so distant, guilt and shame like a physical thing separating him from his family.

“You know, Haechan actually saw you,” Doyoung says quietly when Mark hasn’t said anything for a while. Mark’s head snaps up to look at him. “In that boy’s Dream,” Doyoung explains as his eyes gesture to Mark’s bedroom door again.

“Dejun?”

Doyoung nods, then mumbles “Dejun” absent-mindedly, as if memorizing the name—a story to tell when he comes home and Mark doesn’t go with him. “Yes, him. You were in his Dream, and—we weren’t sure, of course. It could just be someone who looks like you, the Dream wasn’t very clear. Haechan thinks maybe the boy just saw you once and, well, you know how Dreams work. I didn’t expect to actually see you here.” He smiles sadly at Mark. “But then I appeared in that living room, and I don’t know Mark, you looked _scared_ of me.”

Mark’s eyes widen at the insinuation. “What? No, no! I wasn’t scared, hyung! I was just…” he trails off, not really knowing how he looked and not remembering how he felt at the moment. “I guess I was just—ashamed… of you finding me after all this time. Living in an apartment on earth.” _Playing human_ , he wants to add.

“You didn’t want to be found,” Doyoung says, not really in response to what Mark just admitted.

Mark bites his lip, because it’s true—he didn’t. His brothers could have all gone to earth to bring him home, even Dream and WayV who usually don’t venture here. But they didn’t, because they can’t. The magic that allows them to travel from their own little world to earth is a strange thing—they never know the exact names of the places here, much less any coordinates. It’s a simple thought—of a name, a thing, or a memory, that takes them where they need and want to go. But sometimes you don’t always get to go where you’re expecting. Sometimes you miscalculate time. Or sometimes the person or place you’re thinking of just doesn't want to be found.

“I’m sorry, hyung,” Mark says again.

“We all miss you, Markie,” Doyoung replies with a sigh.

Mark smiles at the old nickname. “I know you do, but what about the others?” He gulps at voicing the thought out. “They probably think I’m such a… coward for running away from home, for coming to earth of all places.”

Doyoung scoffs, “No one thinks that!”

“Not even Haechan?” Mark jokes, but Doyoung’s face turns even more downcast. “ _Especially_ not him. He cried a lot after seeing that Dream you know?” Doyoung murmurs.

Mark flinches like he’s been slapped. “I didn’t mean…” _I didn’t mean to make anyone cry_. But he doesn’t finish the sentence as Doyoung takes his hands and looks intently at him. “We _all_ miss you and want you to come home. Please.”

Mark looks at his closed door, almost absent-mindedly, picturing the rest of his tiny apartment beyond it. His cozy window ledge. The kitchen island haphazardly wrapped in faux marble contact paper. Even the glaring Christmas lights and the overly decorated Christmas tree in the corner. It couldn’t even pass off as a knockoff version of the workshop, of _home_ , but…

“I can’t, hyung,” Mark says and Doyoung takes in a sharp breath. “Not yet.”

Doyoung bites his lip. “Is it… the boy?”

Mark blushes. “No! I mean, not in that way. He’s become a very good friend and yes, he’s part of the reason, but honestly, it’s also… everything. I know you’ll scoff at me for wanting to experience being human but—”

“No, Mark, I understand.”

“...You do?”

“Well, okay, no,” Doyoung sighs out. “I’ve- I don’t understand, exactly. But I understand that you have to do this.”

“Hyung—”

“As long as you come home… someday.”

Mark nods. He doesn’t even have to deflect with this one. He knows he’ll come home. Maybe not today, but… someday.

“She’s gone, hyung,” Mark confesses. He sees Doyoung’s mouth drop open slightly, as he moves to hug him again. “Oh, Mark.”

“I mean, she grew up. It’s been fifty years, apparently. I—I woke up in that house and everything is just… no more. Dejun, he’s—he’s the caretaker of the place now. That’s how we met.”

Doyoung nods with understanding, and Mark realizes that he’s been curious all along—probably wanting to ask a thousand questions since he came here but the only thing he dared to ask is why Mark left home.

“Time is a strange thing here,” Doyoung muses as he gently pats Mark on the back. “We’ll be waiting okay?” he says when he finally pulls away. “Of course, it’s not like we have anywhere else to go when it’s not December, but… we’re there, Mark.”

Mark hugs him again. “Thank you, hyung.”

“I guess I just have to be content with the fact that you’re safe, at least. Can I…” Doyoung hesitates. “Can I tell them that I found you?”

“Maybe—maybe just the Dreamies?” Mark says with a hint of guilt. It’s not that he has anything against the others, it’s that he knows they’re the ones most likely to understand.

Doyoung smiles at the group nickname. “Alright, I will. They’ll all be happy.” He sighs, then stands up, dusting non-existent lint from his coat. “Now I’m late for other deliveries,” he picks up the picture frame that lay forgotten in the bed somewhere in between their heart-to-heart conversation.

“Oh,” Mark exclaims as he remembers something. “Dejun baked cookies for you.”

Doyoung’s eyes sparkle at this. “Your roommate’s a cool one, Markie.”

  
  


🎁

_Five years or five decades ago_

**Somewhere**

“Hyung, does time work differently here?” Mark asks Taeil in the middle of filing their reports from last Christmas’ activities.

Taeil pauses, a stapler still in hand with sheets of paper stuck between it. “Hmm, I suppose so,” he says. “But time is such a human concept. What made you think of it suddenly?”

“Nothing,” Mark says quickly. “Just… I’m just wondering about a lot of things. Like, why are we called 127?”

Taeil laughs and ruffles his hair. “Here come all the questions from our growing kid.”

“Hyung!” Mark protests, swatting Taeil’s hand away and fixing his hair back.

“It’s the longitude of Seoul, a city on Earth,” Taeil explains, still laughing at Mark. “They say our world is most visible from there. And you know we never use coordinates but,” he shrugs. “127 is a good name, don’t you think?”

Mark shrugs too. “How long have you been… here, hyung?”

Taeil looks up, narrowing his eyes slightly as he thinks about Mark’s question. “You know, I’m not sure. But, I guess it’s been long. Why?”

“Nothing,” Mark sighs. Taeil looks at him for a few seconds, then finally clicks his stapler shut.  
  


🎁

_Five years or four decades ago_

**The house on top of a hill**

It’s only a day later when Mark comes back to the house, but it’s already apparent that it’s not just 24 hours that have passed since he was last here. He’s in the bedroom this time, the same one he went to when he was twelve and thought he was delivering just another Gift.

The room is empty—completely stripped of any furniture and decoration except for the lace curtains still hanging by the window.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” A voice asks from behind him. Mark turns around and finds—the girl. _It must be_ , Mark thinks, but she looks completely different. _Grown up_. Mark is still a bit taller than her, but she definitely looks older.

“Wh—,” Mark starts to say but the girl’s eyes widen at the sight of him.

“I can’t believe this,” the girl mutters under his breath. “Now I’m going mad too?”

Mark just stares at her for a few long seconds, not quite believing what he’s seeing even though it makes a weird kind of sense in his mind. The last time he was here—just _yesterday_ —she looked twelve, the exact same she was when Mark first saw her that night. Now Mark stayed sixteen, but it’s her who seems to have aged ten years since that day on the side of the house when she was showing him her dolls. She looks thin, far too thin to be healthy, and her cheeks that used to be round and flushed looks a bit gaunt. But she still looks lovely—wrapped up in a lavender sweater and a long white flowy skirt that falls past her ankles.

“You’re… Yeri, right?” Mark asks tentatively.

Yeri offers him a small smile. “That’s right, imaginary friend.”

Mark’s eyebrow raises at this, but Yeri doesn’t notice as she walks past where Mark is standing in the center of the room and goes straight to the window. She gently pulls the lace curtain to one side, letting more sunlight in, its rays directly spotlighting Mark.

“You know, I never got your name,” Yeri says, looking out at the window.

“I—uh, it’s Mark.”

“Mark,” Yeri echoes, turning around to regard him. “You’re back. I was looking for you all this time.” She says it with such a wistful expression that Mark can’t help but feel a little… guilty. _I saw you just yesterday_ , he wants to say. 

“How old are you now?” Mark wonders.

“I’m 22, and this is no longer my room. Come on,” Yeri walks past him again and back to the door. Mark hesitantly follows as she goes down three flights of stairs—painstakingly slow, like every step hurts.

“Are you alright?”

Yeri sighs. “Not really.” It’s all she says before continuing the descent. Once on the ground floor, they go through a long, dimly lit hallway until they reach the door at the end of it.

Yeri turns the knob, and the first thing that Mark sees inside is the lavender wallpaper. Mark’s lips turn up at the corner—so it _did_ manifest into a physical thing. He immediately walks over to the nearest wall and runs a hand through it, then looks around at the room—this is much larger than the one they’d just been to, but it looks almost the same as Yeri’s room when she was younger. Mark was right when he thought that the lavender-printed wallpaper would suit it very much.

“Come in, I guess,” Yeri says with a chuckle as she follows Mark through her own room. She sits down delicately at the tiny couch at the end of her four-poster bed and looks at Mark. “You haven’t grown up at all, haven’t you?”

Mark breathes out a quiet laugh. “No, I guess not.”

“That’s a gift from Mama,” Yeri says, and Mark turns to see her gazing at the wall behind him, with his hand that he didn’t realize is still touching the wallpaper. He brings it back down to his side, embarrassed, but Yeri just chuckles again.

“She said he felt my brother’s… spirit, when she saw it in the store. Isn’t that silly?” She’s looking at Mark with mirth in her eyes, as if she doesn’t believe it’s silly at all.

Mark briefly glances at the wallpaper again - he can still vividly recall the night he brought the idea of the Gift in this house.

“Why did you move rooms?” Mark asks, ignoring Yeri’s question, which seemed to be rhetorical anyway.

“I’ve become too weak to go up and down the stairs every day,” Yeri answers him with a smile, like the fact doesn’t bother her.

“Are you—are you sick?” Mark pries, then bites his lip. Maybe it’s not his business to know. He comes back to that night again, when Yeri woke up just as he was about to go back home—seeing her mother fuss over her, shushing her whimpers that seemed too loud and… painful, in the quiet night.

Yeri nods, surprising Mark. “I am, but no one can determine with what. It’s not… anything physical,” she explains. “Papa—he thought it’s because I’m still longing too much for my brother. That perhaps I refuse to let go of my connection with him, which weakens my body here on earth.” She shakes her head as she says this last line, and Mark can’t tell if it’s because she agrees or finds the idea quite absurd.

“Minhyung,” Mark whispers, remembering yesterday - or ten years ago - and the dolls that Yeri was clutching on both hands.

“You remember his name,” Yeri says with a smile - a proper one this time - at Mark. “I do miss him, but is that ridiculous? I’ve never met him, we got separated at my birth but… we did share a home once, you know?”

Mark nods like he does know—except, does he? All he knows for certain is that hearing Yeri talk about his brother like this makes him feel some kind of… yearning that he’s not sure he’s entitled to. Or even capable of.

“You know what I think?” Yeri speaks up again, and Mark looks at her. “I think you’re him.”

The words—said in a faintest whisper that was carried away by the wind as soon as they came out of Yeri’s mouth—took Mark’s breath away for a split second. And time _is_ a strange thing here, because in that split second, Mark had time to conjure up an imagined life—where a boy grows up in a house painted in the softest eggshell color instead of a home that doubles as a workshop come December, where there’s a sister instead of nineteen brothers.

But it’s gone as soon as the ticking of the clock, and Mark’s thoughts are back to the present and to the girl staring at him with the fondness that only comes from family.

“I’m sorry,” Mark says even though he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for.

Yeri sighs then stands up, pulling back the chiffon that surrounds her bed to lie down in it. She sighs again, deeper this time, then drapes an arm across her forehead. She looks really, really tired.

“Are you alright?”

“Not really,” Yeri says, just like she did back at the staircase earlier. This makes Mark smile, even though he thinks it’s not supposed to, but it’s endearing—how Yeri doesn’t feel the need to lie.

Mark takes a deep breath, then voices out a thought that’s been lingering at the back of his mind since Yeri talked about her brother. “Will it help, if… do you think...” He pulls his hair slightly out of frustration. “Do you think,” he tries again, “it will help you heal if you forget?”

Yeri pulls back her arm and looks up at Mark. “What do you mean?”

“If you forget about… Minhyung,” Mark whispers. “Maybe that’s what will finally heal you.”

  
  


🎁

 _Two weeks ago  
_ **The small apartment in the city**

“God, I love Christmas,” Dejun exclaims - slightly out of nowhere, but Mark has gotten used to it after almost two years of living with him. He’s putting up more decorations in the Christmas tree as Mark absent-mindedly surfs through different channels on the TV.

Dejun started decorating the apartment as early as November, but he seems to add more and more each week until now - two weeks before Christmas - when Mark can’t find a spare inch of the apartment that’s not covered in some representation of holiday cheer.

At the back of their door is a giant red sock trimmed in white faux fur, and there’s an almost terrifyingly long garland snaking through the walls of the apartment - stopping just shy of Mark’s own bedroom door - in alternating green, red, silver, and gold. Over the couch are large letter balloons spelling out ‘Merry Christmas’, and the couch itself is temporarily draped with a garish candy-cane printed cloth. Even the TV has a small Santa hat propped on top of it.

Dejun blows out a breath as he steps off a mini-stool, dusting his hands off. 

“Okay, why do you love Christmas so much?” Mark turns to look at him, the TV paused in static.

Dejun smiles, joining him on the couch. “It’s a long story. Why do _you_ hate Christmas?”

Mark groans good-naturedly. “Not this again! I told you I don’t hate Christmas, _and_ it’s an even longer story.”

Dejun tut-tuts at him. “Fine, then. I keep mine and you keep yours.”

  
  


But three hours and two bottles of soju later and Dejun is loosening his tongue. “You wanna know the truth? It’s not that I _love_ Christmas, it’s just—” He suddenly pauses, staring unfocused at the direction of the TV. He shakes his head after a while— “No, I _do_ love Christmas. It’s just, I hate everything else.”

This admission surprises Mark, who has always thought that Dejun is the most… warm-hearted human on earth. The idea of him hating anything, much less ‘everything else’ seems so absurd. But then again, it’s not like he’s been close to a lot of humans in his life

Dejun turns to look at him, and Mark is caught off guard with the look on his eyes—something like… pain. Mark puts down his own bottle on the makeshift table made out of books and a discarded plywood that they’ve put together in the living room. “Wh—are you okay?”

But the look was gone as soon as it came on Dejun’s face. Now he’s smiling goofily again, cheeks pink from the alcohol. “Never mind,” he says, waving his hand around.

“Dude, you know you can tell me anything, right?” Mark says, a little worried now.

“Okay, I tell you what - I share my story and you share yours. No lying!” Dejun punctuates with a raised forefinger right up Mark’s face. Mark leans back slightly, laughing as he swats it away.

“Alright, sure,” he says because he’s pretty sure by the time he tells his story, Dejun would be far too drunk to remember.

Dejun downs the remains of the bottle, then straightens up. Mark involuntarily does the same as he faces his roommate.

“Christmas is the only good thing in my life,” Dejun starts. Mark almost laughs, but his expression is far too intense to be joking. “Growing up, I—” Dejun continues, picking up another bottle and gesturing vaguely with his other hand. “I never had a real family, you know? I’ve never spent more than a year in the same house. I mean, I can’t blame them— who would want a child like _me_?” He slaps his chest heavily.

“Dejun, I— I didn’t know…”

“That I’m an orphan? That my childhood is just one big blur of me being passed around foster families who cared enough to provide a room but never loved me enough to give me a home?”

Mark opens his mouth, but Dejun cuts him off before he can say anything. “It’s whatever. It’s not their fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Mark says. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

“But Christmas,” Dejun continues as if he hasn’t heard Mark. “I don’t know, I’ve always been happy during Christmas time. You’re going to think this is so corny but— I feel like, like there are… _angels_ watching over me somehow. Making sure to give me just what I need. Like this one time, I dreamed I had a family and the next day I met Kunhang in a foster home.”

“Kunhang?” Mark asks. He’s never heard that name before. But then he realizes he’s never really heard _any names_ from Dejun before.

His gaze slides to the huge ‘Merry Christmas’ banner hanging on the wall above them—the kind that you usually put up when you’re having a Christmas party with friends. But they’re not—in fact, they never have any people over. Not last Christmas and not any other time. Mark has always been thankful of the fact—he may like humans, but he still feels uncomfortable being… close to them, like any minute someone would see through him and figure out that he doesn’t belong. He looks back at Dejun, the only exception to this, it seems, and Mark realizes that he’s never heard him talk about any friends. Well, they never really talk much about their personal lives—not when Mark’s is a whole Pandora’s box that he doesn’t want to unpack. He assumed that they just really didn’t talk about it, but he has never considered that maybe Dejun just doesn’t have anyone to talk about.

“Kunhang was my friend,” Dejun says simply, and it takes a second for Mark to come back from his thoughts and remember where they left off in the conversation. “He’s—he’s gone now,” he adds quietly.

Mark stares at him and he can see—there’s something Dejun is not telling him. It’s a sensation he can’t explain, one similar to the tugging at his core that he feels when he starts to see Dreams. He doesn’t want to pry, but seeing the look on Dejun’s eyes makes his hands itch, like he has to do something, _anything_ , to make it go away.

“Do you want to forget it?” Mark asks Dejun.

“What?” Dejun quickly turns to him with narrowed eyes, as if caught with a thought.

“That… memory,” Mark says. “I mean, I don’t know what it is but I can sort of feel it. There’s something weighing you down, isn’t there?”

Dejun stares at him with wide eyes. “H-how—”

Mark puts his hands up. “You don’t have to tell me. But if you want to… forget... I can help.” This last one he says quietly, as if daring the universe that if Dejun doesn’t hear it, then he won’t ask again. But he _does_ hear it, and now he’s looking at Mark with curious eyes.

“How?”

“I have some—magic, I guess you can call it that—that allows me to see people’s Dreams. But it... it allows me to play with memories and thoughts, too,” he admits. Faintly, he can picture Renjun’s look of disapproval at sharing this with a human.

Dejun just raises his eyebrows at him, but he seems to be drunk enough to just consider the idea.

“I’ve only done it once,” Mark says. “Make someone forget, I mean.”

“What happened?” Dejun asks, looking a bit dazed.

Mark laughs, despite the room’s atmosphere. “What else? She... forgot.” He shakes his head, as if trying to physically push back the memories from his mind.

Dejun turns back towards the TV - which was playing all this time but both of them have been too engrossed in the conversation to notice. After a few seconds, he nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, help me forget it. Do your magic, whatever.”

“I—” Mark clears his throat. “I will have to uh, sift through your mind for me to do it, though.”

Dejun waves a hand—the one that’s clutching his bottle this time, sloshing cheap soju in the living room floor. “Go wild.”

Mark closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to, of course, just like with seeing Dreams. He’s hit with the first wave of Dejun’s memories as he does so, and he clenches his fist as he goes through them - one terrible memory of a foster family after another, monsters in human forms… but in between, memories of Christmas: blurs of red and green and Christmas tree decorations, Christmas lights twinkling in front of houses, little Santa figurines and cookies in different shapes and sizes.

He picks them out carefully with his mind, pulls them aside to get to the darker ones and he lets go of them—of his clenched fist and Dejun’s memories, imagining them dissolving into thin air and being carried away by the December breeze. 

When he opens his eyes again, Dejun is staring at him in a confused daze and looking slightly more sober than he was a minute ago.

Mark stares back at him and still feels the ghost of his own nails digging into his palms, remembering the memories he just saw. But they’re gone now—so instead he marvels at this person in front of him, who lived through all of it and still came out like… this—still managing to be happy in December, among other things.

And Mark thinks— _his_ family is a part of that. Seeing Dreams, creating Gifts, and bringing them into the world—unknowingly, they’ve become a lifeline for Dejun.

Slowly, Mark starts to learn to love Christmas again.

“Thank you, hyung! You’re the coolest!” Mark exclaims before he hangs up the call. He holds it to his chest, feeling giddy but… nervous. It’s a risk, but he knows Doyoung will keep his secret. As for what will happen when they’re there… well, he’ll just have to wait and see.

Doyoung gave him his number a year ago, before he left Mark’s apartment. Mark would have laughed at the prospect of his brothers finally adapting with technology if he hadn’t just cried at that moment. 

He feels a little guilty—he knows Doyoung was expecting him to call more often, but Mark only had the nerve to do so tonight, and just to ask for a favor at that.

He comes back to the living room the next morning, where Dejun is sprawled out on the couch, scrolling through his phone.

“Hey, I may uh—” Mark starts to say as Dejun looks up at him and gives him his full attention. “I may go home for Christmas, after all.”

“Oh,” Dejun sits up. “Uh, okay. Have a safe trip?” He says then seems to consider something. “Where _are_ you from?”

Mark’s about to answer but Dejun inclines his head and points at him. “You know, I just remembered that you still owe me the story of why you hate Christmas!”

Mark chuckles. “I told you I don’t—never mind. It’s just, my family is kind of… in the business. So I’m quite desensitized from holiday cheer.”

Dejun knits his eyebrows. “What kind of business?”

“Uh, gifts?” Mark says, which comes off more like a question.

“Like, toys?” Dejun asks. Mark shakes his head, then nods. “No—yeah, I mean. Sometimes. It’s—it’s really more of a general Christmas business.”

“Yeah, because that makes it less vague.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. It’s really hard to explain. But—I was actually going to ask if you want to come with me? You’ll understand everything perfectly, then.”

Dejun considers this. “Well, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go. Where is it anyway?”

Mark smiles. “Just… Somewhere.”

  
  


🎁

 _December, some time ago  
_ **Somewhere**

“You know what I’ve always wondered?” Mark thinks aloud, leaning back on the soft cushion of the sofa in WayV’s unit and crossing his legs. “How—”

“Shh!” Lucas shushes him with a sharp look. Mark involuntarily puts a hand up and mimes zipping his mouth shut. Across from him, Yangyang stifles a giggle.

A beat later and Lucas sits up straighter in his seat, smiling down at the finished Gift hovering above his table. “Done!” He turns to Mark then, still smiling, “Sorry, bro. What was that?”

Mark laughs. “Nothing, I—”

“Oh come on, I’m sorry for shushing you, it’s just we really need full concentration.”

“No, it’s really nothing. I just— I just always wondered why there’s an extra station there,” Mark says, gesturing towards the corner where an empty worktable stands a bit… forlornly, next to Winwin’s station.

Winwin seems to hear this and looks up, following Mark’s gaze. “Only Kun knows.”

“Only I know what?” Kun enters, balancing several bags of snacks in his arms. He drops it all down at the empty worktable they were all looking at.

“Yooo,” Lucas shouts, throwing a hand up in the air as if he’s in some kind of party. He stands up and sifts through Kun’s latest loot.

“Wha—,” Mark exclaims. “Is this why the pantry runs out so fast?”

Kun turns around sharply, just now noticing him. “Oh, Mark! I didn’t know you’re here!”

“All this time we’ve been blaming Chenle!”

Kun snickers. “Well, _I’m_ the one in charge of the grocery store runs!”

Mark shakes his head, but he stands up anyway and picks his own snack.

“Anyway, only I know what?” Kun asks again, so Mark turns to him mid-bite of a matcha cookie. “Why’s there an empty worktable in your unit?”

Kun shrugs. “This has always been here. We’ve always assumed we’d get another member of the team. Actually—” he abruptly cuts himself off, looking at Mark with a smirk. “We actually thought you’d join us.”

Mark bursts out laughing. “Hyung! It’s like you don’t want me to get any sleep at all!” Lucas joins him, then taps Mark on the back a bit hard that he almost chokes on his cookie, “Dude, how cool would that be, though? You can practically take care of the whole operation on your own.”

Mark hits him back. “Please don’t give the higher-ups any ideas.”

“Anyway,” Kun interjects as he walks back to his own station sandwiched between Ten and Winwin, “we’re always expanding, aren’t we? I can still remember the day you and Jisung came to us. _God_ , you were both so little, then. Look at you now!”

“Yeah, look at you now!” Yangyang turns to him.

“I—,” Mark’s eyebrows furrowed. “You just got here last year!”

Yangyang just shrugs with a grin.

Kun smiles fondly at the both of them. “There’s always room for one more, don’t you think?”

Mark looks at the empty table again—now occupied with various snacks and imagines having another boy in there. Another brother.

“Yeah,” Mark answers Kun with a smile.

  
  


🎁

_Present day_

**The small apartment in the city**

Mark pokes his head inside Dejun’s room and finds his roommate struggling to zip a bulging suitcase shut.

“Hey, need any help?”

Dejun turns his head, and Mark almost giggles at the comical look on his face—dark brows furrowed and mouth stuck in a grimace. “You really don’t need to bring this much,” Mark says as he enters the room and inspects the suitcase.

“Well, you never know what might happen. I have to pack for all likely scenarios.”

Mark holds back a smile—he doubts getting to visit the workshop is one of Dejun’s ‘likely scenarios’. “If you ever need anything, I promise you can get it there.”

Dejun lets go of the zipper with still about one-fifths open and considers him. “You still haven’t told me where you’re from. You’re not taking me to like… a cult, or whatever right?”

“A what?” Mark chuckles. “ _No_ , far from it, I swear.”

Dejun is still looking at him skeptically, but Mark can only shrug. “Just trust me, dude. I mean, you asked me to be your roommate not even an hour after you found me in that house. What’s this compared to that, right?”

Dejun grimaces at the memory. “In my defense, I was really sleep-deprived at that time.”

“Good thing I didn’t turn out to be a murderer,” Mark says, throwing his arms wide.

“I guess,” Dejun says teasingly. “Wait, have you called a cab yet?”

“Uhm,” Mark bites his lip. “We don’t really need one.”

Dejun crosses his arms. “Mark, don’t tell me you’ve had a car all this time and just didn’t tell me? I could have—”

“No—” Mark cuts him off. He scratches the back of his head—he just really wants to go now and just have everything explain itself to Dejun. He doesn’t intend to be all vague and mysterious to his roommate but he can’t exactly tell the whole truth either. It’s really more of a “to see is to believe” situation. “Uhm, just—are you done packing?”

Dejun turns back to his suitcase then maneuvers to get the remaining one-fifth gap shut. “I guess I am.”

Mark nods. “Okay, here we go. Ready?” He reaches out for the suitcase with one hand, and Dejun’s shoulder with the other.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Dejun asks with wide eyes.

Mark ignores him as he closes his eyes, and thinks of _home_.

  
  


🎁

_Present day or a lifetime ago_

**Somewhere…?**

It’s the strangest feeling—like the one you get when you’re half-asleep and you suddenly get the sensation that you’re falling so you snap awake.

Except Dejun is sure that he was not half-asleep, and maybe there _was_ some sensation of falling, but when he snapped awake—after what seems like not even a full second—he’s no longer in his bedroom, sitting on his bed by his suitcase and looking at his roommate weirdly, wondering if he finally snapped.

He looks around frantically. Mark is still next to him and still touching his shoulder, his suitcase has fallen down on its side by his feet and—it’s Christmas. He turns around in awe, taking in the room with his eyes, if it can even be considered a ‘room’. It’s more like a huge concert hall. A concert hall that looks like Santa threw up in it—if Santa threw up in green and red, that is. At the center is a huge Christmas tree, probably five times his height. There are huge chandeliers hanging in the ceiling, but they’re not the only source of illumination in the room. All around Dejun, there are… lights. Tiny ones that seem to be floating—Dejun looks at one up close and... dear _god_ , are they actually floating?

“So, uh. Here we are,” he hears Mark mutter beside him. This snaps Dejun out of admiring thoughts about the place as he looks back down at his roommate.

“Did we just—” he starts to say but swallows his words, his mind already screaming _no way_. “Did we just teleport?!”

Mark breathes out a laugh. “I—I guess you can call it that.”

Dejun’s mouth drops open—his mind still screaming _no_ freaking _way_. He doesn’t get to speak up again as there’s a heavy thud from behind them. They both turn around quickly.

There’s a guy who seems to be around their age—maybe a year or two older, and at his feet is a huge cardboard box which must have been the cause of the sound. He’s staring slack-jawed at them—no, _at Mark_ , Dejun realizes.

“Mark?” the guy says in wonder. Dejun looks at his roommate, who brings one hand up to his neck to rub it. “Hey, hyung,” Mark says.

The guy seems to get out of his daze, rushing over and tackling Mark in a forceful hug that they almost go off-balance. Dejun involuntarily steps back to avoid the collision, staring at them and feeling like a fish out of water. So this is… Mark’s brother, apparently. Dejun stares at him but all he can make out is a prominent set of dimples.

He looks up again, at the garlands adorning the high ceilings and the floating lights. Is this Mark’s home? It must be, because that’s where they were planning to go, right? But _teleporting_ to here? No, he must have… dozed off... on the cab? The bus? The plane? On the way here. It just can’t be.

“Where’s everyone?” Dejun hears Mark ask the other guy as they pull away. The guy’s eyes were shining, stroking his hair and looking at Mark with such fondness that Dejun has to look away, feeling like he’s intruding.

In the almost two years that he’s lived with him, Mark has never really talked about any friends or family. Dejun thought that maybe they were the same, that maybe it’s the thing that brought them together on that chance meeting in the big house—being alone in life. But hearing Mark talk about going home and seeing him here now (notwithstanding the weird circumstances) with a brother, apparently, who adores him so much to almost knock the breath out of his lungs in a hug…

“They’re in the units,” Mark’s brother replies. His gaze slides toward Dejun, standing awkwardly beside them. “What’s this?” the guy asks, looking at him intently.

“Hyung!” Mark exclaims.

The guy gasps as his eyes widen— “Mark, you… you’ve brought a human?!”

Dejun’s mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”

“Oh gosh,” Mark mutters under his breath. “Hyung, this is Dejun. Dejun, this is Jaehyun-hyung.”

“A human?!” Dejun says in reply.

“Yeah, a human?” Mark’s brother—Jaehyun, apparently, echoes, looking incredulously at Mark.

Mark is held off from explaining by the sound of a door opening to their right, then a hurried voice saying, “Jaehyun, where’s that… box.” The voice trails off as it gets closer, and Dejun turns to see that it’s another guy, looking with the same dazed wonder at Mark as Jaehyun’s earlier.

“Mark!” the guy exclaims and runs to them, and Dejun once again has to back away to avoid getting trampled. “Oh my gosh, Mark, you’re home,” the guy says, his voice a bit muffled through Mark’s shoulders.

“Hey, Taeyong-hyung,” Mark says.

“A human,” Dejun hears Jaehyun whisper under his breath. _A human_ , he’s wondering himself. What are these… people that they call _him_ human? What exactly has he gotten himself into?

The other guy—Taeyong—pulls away and Mark gestures to Dejun before he can say anything else. “Hyung, I brought a friend.”

“Oh,” Taeyong turns to him, smiling and holding out a hand. Dejun takes it reluctantly and shakes it. “Nice to meet yo—oh, you’re human!” Taeyong abruptly drops his hand.

“Mark?” Dejun says through clenched teeth. He’s honestly a little scared now.

“Sorry, that was rude!” Taeyong says with an apologetic smile, then faces Mark. “He’s welcome here, of course,” he turns to Dejun— _“You’re_ welcome here, I was just… surprised.”

Dejun stares at him slack-jawed then turns to Mark, who grimaces at him. “I may not have thought this through.”

“You have two brothers?” Dejun says, out of all the thousand thoughts running through his mind.

Mark tries to laugh, “Er, nineteen actually.”

“Nineteen?!”

“What’s taking them so long?” Another voice comes from their right, followed by a slamming door. “Mark? Oh, you came!”

Dejun turns again, and wonders whether he’ll have to do this skit sixteen more times—hearing a voice and a door opening, turning around to see yet another of Mark’s nineteen brothers.

“What do you mean, ‘you came’—did you _know_ about this?” Taeyong says as Mark sighs and waves at the newcomer.

“Hi Doyoung-hyung.”

  
  


“Sorry about all that,” Mark says as he joins Dejun on the couch.

They’re in a much smaller room—a conference room, according to Mark—but instead of a long table it’s just several couches arranged in an oval, facing each other.

“It’s not that we’re not used to humans, because we literally go to earth like all the time, it’s more like we’re not used to humans seeing _us_. On earth, we’re practically invisible, but here...”

Dejun shakes his head. “I’m dreaming, right?”

“You’re really not,” Mark says. “I’m really sorry. I thought it would all make sense when you’re here, but… man, I’m really not good at anticipating people’s thoughts. It’s more Jeno’s forte.”

Mark is talking too fast. Dejun holds up a hand in front of him to pause.

“Where is this place?” _That’s right, one question at a time_ , Dejun says to himself as he tries to steady his breathing.

“This is… somewhere. There’s not really an exact location for this place. It’s just… here.”

_Well, that didn’t help at all._

“Oh, I know—you know Santa’s workshop, right?”

Dejun nods.

“This is it! I mean, not exactly _it_ —but this is like, the origin of that myth.”

Dejun blinks. “Isn’t that… in the North Pole?”

Mark laughs, and it’s that sound—so familiar despite the foreignness of the whole place and this whole thing, really, that tells Dejun that maybe he really isn’t dreaming.

“Wait, so—you’re Santa and his elves?”

Mark laughs again, “Don’t let Doyoung-hyung hear you say that! But I mean, if it helps you understand it better then yeah, we kind of are. We have three units: Dream, 127, and WayV. I’m part of the first two.” Mark proceeds to explain how the whole operation works, and it’s all so surreal that if Dejun closes his eyes, he can imagine that Mark is just telling a bedtime story.

“So when you said that your family is ‘in the business’, you meant the actual business of Christmas?”

“Yeah...” Mark says.

“Oh my god,” Dejun rests his head back on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling. Even in this room, there are still tiny lights floating above their heads. “That’s so—how can you hate Christmas if you grew up in this place?”

“I told you I don’t hate Christmas! You really gotta quit that grinch agenda,” Mark says, chuckling. “I was just… I guess I just got tired of the whole thing for a while.”

“Is that why you came to earth?” Dejun asks. His eyes widen at his own question because—oh god, they’re not even on earth right now.

Mark nods his head. “Yeah, part of it.”

“I really can’t believe this,” Dejun mutters, but even as he does so he can feel himself actually starting to accept the whole thing. It’s all still… _weird_ , for lack of a better term. But he can’t really deny what he’s seeing, despite every logical cell in his brain trying to.

“Are you feeling better now? I’d like you to meet everyone else.”

Dejun takes a deep breath. Eh, what the hell.

“Sure, let’s go.”

  
  


“So, you’re… the sun?” Dejun asks incredulously. This day seems to be all about testing the limits of what his poor human mind can handle.

The boy—Haechan, as Mark introduced him—simply smiles. “Er, you can say that. But hmm, no not really.”

“He’s the one responsible for Christmas in Australia,” Mark says beside him.

Haechan smiles proudly. “Yeah, it’s not all about snow and…” He trails off, as if he can’t think of anything to add. “It’s not all about snow,” he says finally.

“You… you’re the sun?” Dejun says again.

“Gosh, Mark, help me out here—how do I explain this?”

“Dude, it’s your job,” Mark says, putting his hands up.

“I mean, I do have some… power over the sun. Not just in summer, obviously, but yeah.”

“You’re a god?” Dejun tries, and both Mark and Haechan laugh at him.

“Gosh, no!” Haechan exclaims. “If I were, do you think I’d work _here_?”

“It’s complicated, really,” Mark pipes up. “I told you about the three units, right? But apart from those three main responsibilities, we still have our own things going on. And sometimes, we take on projects where we have to work with the guys from the other units. But this whole workshop,” Mark gestures around him, “is mainly for Christmas.”

Dejun shakes his head in wonder. “Wow.”

“I told you it doesn’t work _that_ way, you have to—” “No, no I got _that_! It’s just—”

The three of them turn around at the sudden voices from the door. Dejun sees two boys, looking at their direction with wide eyes.

“Did WayV finally snap and made us a Mark Lee robot?” one of them says after a few seconds.

“Mark-hyung?” the other says.

“Chenle! Jisung-ah!”

“Oh my god, it’s the real one!” Chenle/Jisung exclaims.

Mark goes over and hugs them both, almost lifting their feet off the ground.

“Wow, does earth food make you stronger?”

Mark playfully slaps his shoulder. “Hey, I want you to meet my friend—” He turns back to Dejun and gestures for him to come over. “Dejun, this is Chenle and Jisung,” he says, pointing at each of them in turn. “Guys, Dejun.”

“Hi,” Dejun greets them timidly.

“A human?” the one named Chenle says. Dejun’s got to admit that he’s getting tired of hearing that.

“How did you explain that to Taeyong-hyung? To _Kun_?” Jisung asks, staring at Dejun in wonder.

Haechan _pfft_ s from the corner. “Please, they’re just happy to have Mark-hyung back. They’d let him get away with anything.” He inclines his head, looking at Mark. “Maybe I _should_ run away, too, one of these days.”

The others stare at him for a few long seconds. “Ugh, too soon?” Haechan asks as Jisung giggles.

“I really missed you guys, I’m... sorry for leaving.”

The door suddenly flies open again, and in comes a harried-looking trio and Dejun can’t help but think of candies as he takes in their pastel-colored hair—pink, green, and blue.

“Mark-hyung is back?!” the pink-haired one yells into the room, before his eyes land on Mark himself, who’s already smiling. The four of them come together in a fierce hug, and Dejun is once again left in the corner of the room, feeling like he’s on the outside looking in. But this time, he’s not as… bitter. He never was—a little sad, maybe, when he first watched Mark be tackled into a hug by Jaehyun in the concert hall earlier, which is apparently just the workshop’s common room. Now, he just feels… happy. A second-hand happiness, from seeing Mark—the closest friend he’s come to have for the past almost two years—reunited with his family.

When they pull away, Mark introduces him to the three—Jaemin, Renjun, and Jeno, who thankfully didn’t say anything about him being human, although Jaemin did cup his cheeks and exclaimed, “Ah, what a pretty thing!” as Renjun and Jeno looked at him apologetically.

“Alright, let’s go to 127!” Mark says, dragging him by the hand.

  
  


127 is an older bunch. Dejun already felt a little intimidated by the Dreamies—as Mark calls them—even though he seems to be older than all of them. _Seems_ , because as he has come to understand, these… people seem to be immortal. But the 127 unit seems like an imposing crew, all towering over him and at least half looking at him skeptically.

“You guys are scaring the poor kid!” Taeyong says after they have been standing in quiet silence for a while.

The guy at the corner—with long red hair and several piercings that reflect the tiny lights that seem to follow them to every room is the first one to transform his poker face to a smile and come over to shake his hand. “Hey, Dejun! I’m Yuta.”

“Oh, hello. Nice to meet you,” Dejun replies, still a little bit intimidated. Is this really the unit mistaken for Santa Claus?

Yuta smiles at him then goes to Mark, hugging him from the side.

“You’ve already met Jaehyun-hyung and Doyoung-hyung,” Mark says, with Yuta still latched onto him.

The two look at Dejun, even Jaehyun who was looking at him so skeptically before.

“I loved your cookies, by the way,” Doyoung says.

“Oh, uh,” Dejun sputters out, feeling his cheeks heat up. “You- you ate them?”

Mark chuckles. “Yeah, he’s been to our apartment last Christmas.”

“What?” Taeyong shrieks.

“Hey, Mark told me not to tell!” Doyoung protests. 

“I thought you ate the cookies!” Dejun says to Mark at the same time.

“Anyway, this is Taeil-hyung, Jungwoo-hyung, and Johnny-hyung. Haechannie’s actually part of this unit, too, but you’ve already met him.”

The three other brothers smile at Dejun.

“Welcome,” the tallest of them—Johnny—says to him.

Taeil looks at him intently then smiles. “You know, I think I’ve come to give you a Gift before!”

Dejun feels himself blush again, “Oh, wow. Thank you!”

“I need to start paying attention to the humans I give Gifts to,” Johnny mutters.

“Are you staying?” Jungwoo asks, looking at Dejun.

“I—I mean, I packed a suitcase,” Dejun tries to laugh. “Honestly I was just expecting a small family home in the suburbs.”

“You’re welcome to spend as much time as you want here,” Taeyong says. “But I have to warn you that time works differently here. Who knows how many seconds or years will have passed once you come back to Earth—you know what, _Kun_ might actually know. I’ll talk to him later.”

 _Come back to earth_. Dejun is again reminded that he’s currently somewhere _not_ on earth. But while the same thought from earlier slightly freaked him out, this one just… saddened him. Despite the overwhelming feeling of being here and learning all about Mark’s true family, he actually finds himself enjoying his stay so far and meeting all his brothers.

They haven’t talked about it yet, but all this talk of “Mark has finally come home” has made him realize that maybe he’s making the trip back to their small apartment on his own. Or, well, of course Mark will have to bring him back—considering that Dejun can’t... teleport and all. But Mark will have to come home, here, at some point. And Dejun will once again be left alone.

“ _You’re_ the one scaring the poor kid,” Dejun hears Doyoung say.

“Uhm,” Dejun clears his throat. “I’ve actually been wondering about the time thing. If it works so differently from Earth, how do you manage to come to earth on Christmas every year?”

It’s Jungwoo who answers him. “We don’t exactly come every year, sometimes our deliveries can be for Gifts for the next twenty years or so. And we don’t just come on Christmas Eve, either. Gifts have a way of manifesting themselves _on_ Christmas Eve, but we can leave them anytime.”

“That’s… so cool,” is all that Dejun manages to say.

“Okay, information overload,” Mark says when he sees him probably looking quite unnerved. He untangles himself from Yuta’s hug then turns to face Dejun. “Let’s go. Time for the last stop—WayV.”

  
  


Dejun’s tiny gasp sounded about three times louder than it’s supposed to when they enter the WayV unit. It’s so _quiet_ that Dejun first thought it was empty, but there are actually six guys in the room, seated at their own worktables much like the ones he’s seen in Dream and 127. They’re all hunched down over their tables, and what made Dejun gasp is the sight of the different things being… created in them. It’s like watching a 3D printer, except there’s no printer, just objects coming to life in front of his very eyes.

Each table is glowing faintly, and all Dejun can think is that shows and movies about magic got the glowing thing right, at least.

“I think we should just come back, I didn’t know they’d be in the middle of—” Mark starts to say, but the glow in one of the center tables suddenly shuts off, drawing Mark’s and Dejun’s gaze to it.

“Wha— _Mark?_ ”

At the sound of his name, the light at the other tables all shut off, too, almost at the same time—the objects in them lying half-finished in the wake.

“Mark?!” A deep voice from the corner exclaims, breaking the silence, and all at once there’s shuffling and the six guys scrambling to stand up and rushing towards Mark, all of them talking at the same time, saying ‘You’re back’ and ‘I missed you’ and ‘Where the hell have you been’ in different variants.

Dejun steps aside again, watching yet another reunion. His breath catches in his throat when one of them pulls away from the group hug and notices him. “Hey, who’s this?” he says, pointing at Dejun but looking at Mark.

The other five immediately pull away from Mark, too and turn to look at him. Dejun feels like he’s in the spotlight.

“This is my friend, Dejun. And before you say anything—” Mark says, cutting off several mouths that open in question, “Yes, he’s human. He’s my roommate on earth.”

Dejun timidly bows his head. “Uh, nice to meet you all.”

“Nice to meet you! I’m Kun,” the one who asked Mark earlier says. “Have a seat.”

Dejun looks around him, and sees that there’s a sofa on his opposite corner, where the seven of them including Mark are all clustered together. Behind him is what seems to be an empty worktable, so he chooses this instead—pulling out the rolling chair tucked under it and perches himself on it.

When he looks up at the other guys, they’re all staring at him curiously.

Dejun hastily stands up from his seat, “Oh—oh I’m sorry, was I not supposed to sit here? I—”

Kun lets out a laugh. “No, no! No one really uses that, it’s just—it’s weird, actually seeing someone on it. Please, sit.”

“Yeah,” the tallest of them agrees. “I was like, oh so _that_ ’ _s_ how it’d look like if we’re complete. I’m Lucas, by the way,” he says then comes over to shake Dejun’s hand.

“Hey, I’m Hendery,” another one of them breaks away from the cluster and walks toward him. He has pink hair—like Jaemin’s, and it’s not until Lucas snaps his fingers in front of Dejun’s face that he realizes he’s been staring a while.

“I’m sorry! I—” Dejun says. “You just—you look so familiar, which is, I mean. Of course, I don’t know you. You just reminded me of a childhood friend.”

Hendery smiles at him. “Must have been quite a handsome childhood friend!”

Another guy pushes him aside and extends a hand to Dejun, “I’m Ten. Hendery just has a generic face, that must be why.”

“Hey!”

“And I’m Yangyang,” the last one waves from the corner, flashing him a toothy grin.

“Nice to meet you,” Dejun says again. They slowly disperse and go to their respective stations. Dejun looks at Mark hesitantly, biting his lip, then turns to Kun. “Uh, do you mind if I… stay here and watch you work? But if it would be too distracting—”

“Not at all!” Kun says, offering him a warm smile. “What is it again—Dejun?”

Dejun nods. “Yeah, Xiao Dejun.”

Kun brings his thumb and forefinger to his chin, considering him. “How about I call you Xiaojun?”

  
  


🎁

_Sometime later_

**Somewhere**

“I can’t believe Kun asked me to do this. I’ve only been here a year!” Xiaojun paces through the workshop’s wide doorway, biting his lip.

“Dude, relax! It means Kun trusts you, you know him well enough to know that he doesn’t just make random decisions.”

Xiaojun stops pacing and stares at him. “You’re right.”

“Stop doubting yourself!” Mark steps toward him and firmly places both hands on his shoulders. “You’re one of us now, okay?”

Xiaojun nods, exhaling slowly.

“Come on, let’s welcome the newbies.”

  
  
  


“Oh, I would have thought it’s the other way around,” Mark says as soon as the two boys in front of them introduce themselves. “So you’re Sungchan,” he says, pointing to the taller one, as tall as Johnny - Mark observes, “and you’re Shotaro. Welcome!”

“Welcome,” Xiaojun echoes, smiling at them.

The two boys bow their heads. “Thank you, hyungs. It’s nice to meet you.”

Mark turns toward the door and gestures for them to follow, as Xiaojun hangs back to walk with them. “You guys are going to love it here,” he says, putting his arms around the two.

  
  


Mark is rummaging around the almost thousands of boxes in the storage room, looking for extra supplies that Sungchan and Shotaro can use. It’s December, their busiest season, and maybe not really the best time to take in new members of the family, but then again, it was December when Xiaojun joined them, too. Even much closer to Christmas at that.

He’s about to move on to the next box when something catches his eyes—a dark wooden picture frame, strangely like the one that…

“Hey, Doyoung-hyung,” Mark calls out to his older brother who’s rummaging through his own set of boxes on the opposite corner. “Doesn’t this look like the Gift you had for De—er, Xiaojun, all those years ago?”

Doyoung stands up and walks over to him, taking the picture frame and inspecting it. “Oh my god, it _is_ the same picture frame!”

“Woah, really?” Mark exclaims. “That’s so cool!”

Doyoung smiles. “Now I guess we know what the Gift represents.”

  
  


“Knock, knock,” Mark calls out to the open door to the WayV unit.

“Hey!” Xiaojun greets him. “What’s up?”

“I know you’re the one of the two of us that creates Gifts and all but, I have something for you.” Mark holds out the picture frame. “It’s, uh, the Gift that Doyoung-hyung came to give you, that one Christmas in the apartment.”

“Hey, I made that!” Kun pipes up, standing up from his station to peek over Xiaojun’s.

“Wow,” Xiaojun breathes out. “This is—thank you, Mark,” he says. He bends to his side, reaching for his mobile drawer. Mark sees him pull out a photo from it—one they took from last Christmas, or was it fourteen Christmases ago? He can never really tell. Xiaojun slides the photo into the frame, then sets it down at his table.

“That’s so cool,” Lucas says, also peeking over at Xiaojun’s. “I wish _I_ could receive gifts.”

Mark laughs. “I’ll find something in the storage room for you.”

“Things really find a way to come back here, huh,” Winwin says, looking at Mark with a meaningful smile.

“Yeah,” Mark nods. “They do.”

  
  


It’s probably a lifetime that’s passed, but everyone still finds a way to joke about that one time that Mark ran away and came home bringing with him a new addition to the family.

Mark sometimes looks back at it, at the desperation that he felt then that seems so distant now—to come back to that house on the hill and see the family, the _girl_ that lives there, even though he’s already helped her let go and made her forget.

All the other times that he visited that house, he only thought of... a lilac dress, lavenders, a sister. And it always took him straight to where she is. But that time—that time when all he wanted was to see her again, all he could think of is _family_ , and it took him to an empty and abandoned house. Mark thought for a long time about that, thought that maybe it was fate playing a cruel joke on him, taking him back to the house but to a time when there’s no more family in it.

But he met Xiaojun there, didn’t he?

And now, finally, he understands.

**Author's Note:**

> would just like to say a quick thanks to my friends, for the virtual hand-holding as I struggled to finish this fic (and that one night that I almost scrapped the whole thing). yall are the best mwa ♡
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/softfordoyu/status/1347843660356878340?s=20) / [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/dyintherain)


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